Founders

Welcome to the first Founder's channel Office Hours!

What's on your mind?

I'll kick things off (from an angel investor perspective).

I'm always surprised by 2 things:

1. Founders fundraising who don't use this format for their deck

https://www.slideshare.net/PitchDeckCoach/sequoia-capital-pitchdecktemplate

2. Pre-Series B founders that don't send regular investor updates.

1. Clear asks
2. Intellectually honest
3. Short
4. Minimize requiring clicks outside (Docsend, notion, etc.)

Investors want to help but are often reading the update in line for coffee on their phone

Here's my template:

Building https://srcbook.com // creator of the https://blockchainsmokers.xyz

1. Clear asks
2. Intellectually honest
3. Short
4. Minimize requiring clicks outside (Docsend, notion, etc.)

Investors want to help but are often reading the update in line for coffee on their phone

Here's my template:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y3SmneDvc11XLwPA8sPgci1HN5qNatRHkSNyGVcCJEU/edit?usp=sharing

Tips on what make investor updates great, and what is the right frequency?

Co-founder @ponder | @survey | Ex   | colinjohnson.io

There were over 50 submissions (that pinged me). A lot of interesting projects!

Currently wondering how many other FC founders applied to a16z CSS and internally running the odds.

web3 Builder, part-time Writer

https://x.com/sahil_uddin

re: roadblocks — all the time. Part of building something new is being able to push through the doubt for longer than most people think reasonable. Helpful to have a co-founder who can keep you motivated when you're personally down (and vice versa).

IDK any successful founder whose personal life isn't chaotic.

Did you ever hit major roadblocks and thought to yourself “I give up”. If so, how did you overcome them?

Also - how do you keep you personal life, mental health, and emotions in check whilst building something massive - that’s anything from networking, to design, research etc.

BDFL of Quilibrium, Eng @ Farcaster, ex-Coinbase, always opinionated, never hydrated

/quilibrium

Why are so many VCs stuck in the mindset that “innovation can’t happen outside of SF/NYC/London”? I’ve literally had a pitch meeting where a VC asked where I was calling from and after answering Kansas, asked with a pitying face, “why?”

VC-backed game is about growth and speed of execution. Very few exceptions here but they exist.

Bootstrapped or non-VC game is choose your own adventure. Really depends what you’re optimizing for personally.

What do you think about calm companies (see calm fund) vs blitzscaling?

cma.xyz. Founder /paragraph, ceo /mirror, previously at Google & Coinbase 

Haven’t been one myself.

But would imagine a founder group that meets up 2x a month for dinner and/or exec coach could help fill emotional support role.

Prioritization help could be your lead investor.

We charge people to use the protocol. 

https://optimistic.etherscan.io/txsInternal?a=0x00000000fcce7f938e7ae6d3c335bd6a1a7c593d

To get people to use the protocol, build the first product. 

https://danromero.org/product-led-protocols.html

Productizing RWAfi @plumenetwork. Letting you earn from all RWAs on Plume using https://nest.credit. Hosting /rwa, /plume, /nest and https://palmer.earth

Pivoting away from the larger vision of “crypto securities exchange” (while had good early traction, not convinced that it’s needed).

Focusing on infra - permissionless equity protocol. Figuring out how it can make $ at protocol level.

How does Farcaster do it?

Chasing Curiosity. Pluralist. Empathetic Accelerationist. Founding Fullstack Engineer @icebreaker. YC S16, KB7, fid:66
icbk.me/tayyab.fc

Should you get chat gpt to write your production smart contracts?

building farcaster infra @ /neynar 🪐 casting @ /rish

Bay Area is the most serious place to build a startup.

What would you pick between NYC and Bay Area for a new crypto startup?

It depends. Consumer is about discovering a new underserved behavior but unlikely something that people can tell you (stated vs. revealed preference).

My more straightforward in SaaS / enterprise to build a product that solves a stated problem.

Founders talk about PMF as if it's a result of throwing features at a wall until something sticks. These same founders aren't starting with a solution to a real pain point of a real user.

It seems more founders push solutions rather than pulling them; why? Pulling has proven the more effective approach handedly.

Researcher
Co-author of EIP-7212 
Ex- @getclave

It depends?

How you failed is important.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing for a founder that has founded a startup and raised money and failed the startup 


I’m asking for investors perspective 

(This is not me btw 😄)

Arsenal | Working on algorithmic public goods funding at tea

1. Truth seeking
2. Hard working
3. Ability to make good tradeoffs

1. Taste — Gut

2. Data — Early signs of usage / increased engagement.

3. WDHTB — "what do you have to believe" — assuming you continue to drive increased usage / engagement, do you believe that can expand to greater and greater sized populations. Informed by talking to current users and prospective users

Beyond talking to users and metrics, how do you choose what to prioritize to get to pmf?

Eg, what led to doubling down on channels?

Lead Clank @clankpad || Midwest mom in a California dad bod || Ruthlessly pro Farcaster

1. Embedded wallets make more sense on mobile than desktop.

2. Power users will use a dedicated wallet app like Rainbow or MetaMask

3. What wallet signs, pays for txn and where the asset ends up might be different. Think Farcaster address, Warpcast paymaster and your connected ETH address.

Do you think in app wallets are really going to take off, or just better SSO for crypto apps with less wallet switching

chain rewards the curious | initial contributor at @interface | /interface /wijuwiju /walkthewalk | online at app.interface.social/wijuwiju.eth

Allowing developers to more easily bootstrap users for novel social apps and services. Better connecting people is a worthwhile endeavor.

What real world problems do you believe Farcaster + projects on top of it can solve, that excites you the most?

product marketing @espressosys // prev marketing work @gauntlet @coinbase @darkblock // 10+ yrs in biz journalism // dad x2 👨‍👦‍👦

Get retained users (or customers) and people may change their answer.

What to do if the response you get from several investors is a No followed by... "cool tech, will be necessary, but you're too early" 

It's very disheartening.

Yes. I don't have one personally but have a few friends who swear by it.

Do you know anyone who has ever had a personal board of directors (a la Jim Collins), or started sending Investor Updates before they have formal cap table? What would be potential pros/cons?

building reel.farm and farcasterstudio.com

Depends on the product and what you're optimizing for (venture-scale biz vs. bootstrapped 100% founder owned biz, etc.).

at what MAU/MRR should a founder suggest going all in on a product?